I have to document this problem, for the record, to warn others about this. I'm sure our organization isn't the only one this has happened to.

BACKGROUND:

Nearly five months ago, our office moved locations to a University Campus. We had happily been using BellSouth's local/long distance service and had a number of lines with them. As we were moving to a university campus, however, where bellsouth is NOT the provider and the phone systems are internally regulated, we desparately wanted to keep our old phone number as we had a vast amount of people using the one we'd had for years to contact us. We downsized our Bellsouth account to hold the one primary phone number (to soon be ported to Vonage-- we thought.) Upon moving, we immediately began business with Vonage, initiating the first of many attempts to transfer the old number. Insert months of waiting, numerous LNP attempts, numerous tech-support calls, numerous different faulty solutions, numerous false hopes, and numerous let-downs, and today I discover the root of the problem.

THE PROBLEM:

1) Bellsouth is LITERALLY UNABLE to change the 'service address' of our account from the old office location (because they CANNOT service the university address), though the 'billing address' has been updated to our university address for months (and yes-- we're still being billed for them to hold a number so Vonage can port it)

2) Vonage is (direct quote from CC rep) "required by law to NOT change the physical address of the business due to the 911 dialing" and since we began business with Vonage upon moving, they have our new university address as the physical location (which is correct, but it's permanency is the cause of this problem).

3) The two addresses MUST match, or, Vonage cites, it is quite impossible to port your phone number for "security reasons".

SOLUTION:

Discontinue Service with both Vonage AND Bellsouth, loose our old phone number and hundreds of potential contacts, wonder why in the world so many people love this company, never know why it took so long and none of the CC reps or escalation people could figure this out, and finally-- write a book on how to waste your money and loose business in the process.

I think the following will work. All of the address changes I suggest here are ones that you can do yourself from the web interface.

On the same Vonage account, add an additional line, but on a separate ATA. If possible (but this isn't critical), install the separate ATA in a closet at your old location. Put in the 911 dialling address for that line as your old address. Once it is activated, do a number change on the additional line to the number you want to port. The physical addresses will now match. At the time of the port (after you receive the second ATA), you might also want to set your shipping address to the old address.

After the port is completed, move the box to your new location, update all the address to be the new location, and disconnect the other Vonage box or just continue to use it for additional service.

I'm not 100% sure this will work, but it would seem to satisfy all the security problems.